Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Haggerty

I got the recipe for this from Maura Laverty's marvelous cookbook, Feasting Galore Irish Style, which has more bacon recipes than you can shake a stick at, not to mention a lovely style riddled with anecdotes. It comes across very much as a cookbook full of recipes that someone mostly wrote down from memory, perhaps in a bit of a hurry, while also reminiscing lovingly about various occasions in which these dishes were cooked. This sometimes requires you to improvise - in this case, for instance, the recipe never actually said what to do with the cheddar cheese - but it's wonderful nonetheless. What follows is my version of the dish:

Haggerty

3 medium sized potatoes

1 onion

a couple slices of bacon

some bacon grease

some cheddar

Slice the potatoes and onion paper thin. Chop up the bacon and fry it in a medium sized pan. Once it's done, remove the bacon, set it aside, and leave the grease. Throw another spoon or so of bacon grease into the pan. Then, put in a layer of potatoes, followed by a layer of onion. Sprinkle some cheddar on. Repeat. When you get to the middle, put the bacon in with the cheddar. Also, work it such that the top layer is potato. Oh! and sprinkle some salt and pepper in there*. Drop a few spots of bacon grease onto the top potato layer. Cook until the bottom has gotten nice and crispy, then carefully slide it only a plate, then return it to the pan bottom side up. Or flip it in the pan, if you have that much faith in yourself. As you can discern from the photo, I managed to botch this part a bit. Cover and cook until it's done - if you've sliced the potatoes thin enough, the whole thing shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so. Slice into wedges and serve.

*I forgot the salt and pepper and just added it at the end. It came out ok, but I think it would have been better if I'd integrated it into the cooking process.

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